by Maynard Sims
“No, Robert,” she said bridling. “But they’re used to carrying out these investigations unsupervised. They’re both strong psychics so they’re more than capable of looking after themselves.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” Carter said. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here yet, and until we know what the danger is, I don’t want anyone taking unnecessary risks. Come on, let’s find them.”
“We’d better check floor by floor,” Frankie said, trying to wrest back some element of control from Carter. She knew why he was so angry. A routine investigation he’d headed a few months ago had ended tragically with the disappearance of his assistant, Sian Davies. Some members of the department were convinced he’d never really gotten over it. “We’ll take the stairs and search thoroughly.”
“Up or down?” Adam Black said.
Carter turned to the young man, who was scuffing the toe of his shoe on the deep-piled carpet in a mixture of anxiety and embarrassment, and avoiding eye contact. “Pardon?”
“Up or down,” Black said again. “We don’t know which way to go.”
“Up,” Carter said.
“Why?”
Carter fixed him with a cold hard stare. “Because I say so.”
“You’re the boss,” Black said without malice.
“And I just wish people would remember that,” Carter said and walked from the apartment.
Jonathan Lassiter was seething. He paced on the street outside Dunster House, punching numbers into his cell phone and wallowing in the frustration of not being able to raise anyone significant at this time of day. The frustration was feeding his anger. He couldn’t believe he’d been dismissed from the building in such a high-handed way, as if he were nothing more than an errant schoolboy caught loitering indoors during recess.
He snapped his phone shut and dropped it back into the pocket of his suit jacket. He suddenly became aware of the rain, soaking his hair, his Armani, and his Gucci loafers. This was intolerable. He turned on his heel and pushed open the door of Dunster House and walked out of the rain.
Once inside he looked around for someone to vent his anger on, but the foyer was deserted. He swore savagely and crossed the marble-tiled floor to the elevator, punching the call button, tapping his foot impatiently as he waited for the elevator to descend. Once the doors slid open, he stepped inside, staring at the panel of buttons for a long moment before making a decision. Finally he pulled his bunch of keys from his pocket, inserted one into the panel and twisted it, at the same time hitting the button for the penthouse.
As the car started to ascend, he leaned back against the wall, taking out a handkerchief and dabbing away the rain from his face. He’d been up to the penthouse only twice before and that was pre-occupation. Now the luxurious apartment was owned by an Asian businessman who had made his fortune in the clothing trade.
It would be interesting to see how the mega-rich lived. It was a lifestyle he aspired to but knew he was a long way from attaining. He also wanted to be up at the top of the building when the bunch of morons from the Home Office, or wherever they were from, arrived there. He’d show them he wasn’t fazed by their scare mongering and that Braxton stood by the quality of its developments.
The elevator juddered to a halt between the twenty-first and twenty-second floor. He twisted the key and pressed the button again, but the car didn’t budge. He ran his hand over the panel, hitting all the buttons, but nothing happened.
He was suddenly aware that the temperature in the car was dropping. A few seconds later, his breath started to mist in front of his face and he shivered. He sniffed the air and recoiled as the stench of rotting meat filled his nostrils.
As the first black shape slithered in under the door Jonathan Lassiter felt a tremor of disquiet. What the hell was going on?
Chris Baines hesitated outside apartment 105 and rested his hand on the door. There was something inside. He could sense it.
“Well?” Ellen said, catching up with him.
“Can’t you feel it?”
She shook her head, chewing pensively at her bottom lip.
“You’re blocking.”
“You betcha,” she said. “I’m not leaving myself open to attack. Three people have died, Chris.”
“Okay,” he said. “Stay behind me.” He slipped the key card into the lock and turned the handle.
It was dark inside the apartment, despite the onset of early morning. He slid his hand across the wall and located the light switch. He flipped it, but the room stayed dark.
“The lights should be working,” Ellen said, a tremor to her voice. “We shouldn’t need them anyway, it’s light outside.”
“Relax,” he said and pulled a flashlight from the bag he had slung over his shoulder. He switched it on and swung the beam around the room, drawing in his breath when the light flickered over a figure sitting in a chair by the window. He pulled the beam back, aiming it directly at the chair, but he couldn’t see any more clearly. There was a figure there, but it seemed to be absorbing the light, sucking it in like a black hole.
“We should go back and get Carter,” Ellen said, clutching the sleeve of his jacket,
“Shh! Hello!” he called to the figure in the chair. “I’m Chris Baines. This is my colleague, Ellen McCrory.”
The figure remained silent and unmoving.
“We were told this building was empty. Would you mind telling us what you’re doing here?”
Ellen tugged at his sleeve. “Chris? Chris! Let’s get out of here.”
As she spoke, the figure started to rise. They still couldn’t see properly. It was just a shape, the build of a large man, darker than the surrounding darkness.
They took a step backward. Ellen clamped a hand across her nose as a foul odor hit her like a physical blow.
“God! I think I’m going to be sick.” She started to retch.
Baines focused the flashlight, willing the beam to glow brighter, but it was useless. The light was being swallowed. There was a sound, like dry autumn leaves blown across concrete, and the shape exploded, fragmenting into a hundred smaller shapes that skittered across the floor, flapping and flailing like disembodied blackbird wings. The shapes moved past them, plucking at their clothes, slithering over their skin.
Ellen screamed.
Baines dropped the flashlight and sank to his knees, folding his arms over his head as he was buffeted by the shapes.
The apartment door slammed, and it was all over. The stench and the shapes had gone.
Baines gradually uncurled his arms from his head, picked up the flashlight, and stood. He shined the beam around the room. Ellen was standing at the window with her back to him as if staring out at the street below. “Ellen? Ellie?”
She didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge him at all.
He took a few steps forward, reached out, and touched her shoulder. “Ellie?”
At his touch, she crumpled to the floor, deflating like a burst balloon.
The flashlight’s beam took in the withered skin of her face, the bleached white, cotton-candy texture of her hair. Her mouth sagged open, and he watched as her teeth crumbled to dust and fell away.
And then he screamed too.
He was still screaming when the others found him five minutes later.
In the elevator, Jonathan Lassiter was brushing frantically at his clothes, trying to dislodge the black shapes as they crawled up his neat Armani suit toward his face, but it was no use. It was like trying to sweep away shadows.
He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. Panic, pure blind panic.
The shadow shapes reached his throat, and he felt himself suffocating as they constricted his breathing. He opened his mouth wide, trying to suck in the fetid air of the elevator car, but succeeded only in sucking in the slithering black shapes.
They poured down his throat in a shadowy wave, filling him up, swelling in his stomach. And then they were moving through his body; settling in his legs and arms, nestling
in his genitals, making his penis swell into a huge erection.
Suddenly he felt exhilarated, more alive than he had for years. He stretched his arms wide, inviting the shapes to enter him; all panic gone, just a sense of peace, of power. He felt he could do anything, anything at all.
Anything, that is, except remember who he was.
The elevator car lurched and restarted its ascent. As it reached the penthouse, the doors opened and he stepped out into the plush, luxurious apartment. He looked about him, taking in the hugely expensive antique furniture, the massive plasma-screen television, the Picasso hanging on one wall and the Degas on another, and he felt nothing. No sense of envy, no sense of desire. Everything he had ever needed, he now possessed. Buried deep inside him was the key, the essence of life itself. He flopped down onto a Louis XIV chair, surveyed his new kingdom, and started to laugh.
“Frankie, take Baines downstairs and get him out of the building. Wait by the car.”
Frankie was staring down at Ellen’s desiccated body, a look of sheer horror on her face. Carter’s words washed over her but didn’t sink in.
“Frankie!” Carter gripped her by the shoulders and shook her. “Get Baines outside, now!”
Her eyes refocused and she stared at Carter as if seeing him for the first time. “What?”
Carter turned to Chris Baines, who was slumped against the wall, tears coursing down his face. “Chris, go with Frankie.”
Adam Black said, “I’ll take them.”
“No, I want you with me.”
“It’s okay,” Frankie Morgan said, gathering herself. “I’ll take him. I’m fine now.” She crossed to where Baines was leaning against the wall and wrapped her arm around his shoulders. “Come on, Chris. Let’s get you out of here.”
Baines responded by burying his face into Frankie’s shoulder and sobbing, his whole body heaving with the shock of losing Ellen.
Carter watched them go. He was as relieved to get rid of Frankie as he was to be rid of Baines. He’d seen the fear in her eyes, and fear was dangerous in a situation like this. He walked from the apartment, out into the corridor, Black trailing close behind him.
“Any ideas?” he said to the younger man.
Black was staring at the indicator panels for the elevator. “There’s a clue,” he said, pointing to the right-hand panel. A red letter P was glowing under the black plastic casing. “The penthouse,” he said.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because it should be showing the ground floor, not the penthouse. We called both elevators down, remember? Someone, or something’s, taken it up to the top of the building.”
Carter crossed to the elevators and pressed the call button. Moments later the left-hand doors opened and they stepped inside.
Black studied the buttons. “We need a key to get up to the penthouse. This only takes us to the twenty-fifth floor.”
“It will have to do,” Carter said. “There must be service stairs, or maybe even a fire escape that will take us up there.” He hit the button to floor twenty-five and watched as the doors slid shut.
Black tapped his foot nervously as the car began to move. There was a fine sheen of perspiration coating his face.
“Are you up to this?” Carter said to him.
Black nodded. “What do you think happened to Ellie?” he said.
Carter shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. What I don’t understand is how Baines escaped the same fate.”
“Maybe he was better able to protect himself,” Black offered.
“Possibly. But I don’t want to lose anyone else, so be careful.”
“You mustn’t blame yourself,” Black said.
“I don’t,” Carter said bluntly. “I said we should all stick together. If they’d listened, Ellen McCrory might still be alive.”
Black fell silent and watched the floor numbers pass with a mounting sense of trepidation.
When they reached twenty-five, the elevator stopped moving, the doors opened, and the two men stepped out.
Frankie settled Chris Baines into the back of the SUV, closed and locked the door. He was too distraught to go anywhere so it would be safe enough to leave him. She’d caught the look of concern in Carter’s eyes, and it was bothering her. He’d submit a report to Simon Crozier, Director General of Department 18, and, however he phrased the words, it would show her in a bad light.
She had spent the last two years pushing for the promotion that would enable her to lead her own investigative team and finally she had achieved her ambition. It would be nothing short of a travesty if, on her first serious assignment, she was perceived to be lacking the necessary leadership skills. The fact that Crozier had called in Carter to oversee the operation showed that he still had no confidence in her abilities. She couldn’t afford to be seen as weak, or worse, incapable.
She pulled up the collar of her jacket against the rain and walked quickly back to Dunster House, pushing open the doors and slipping inside.
Every member of Department 18 had one psychic ability or another. Frankie Morgan was a highly adept physical medium. She had held séances where whole rooms had come alive as psychic energy channeled through her. There was one memorable instance where a stone elephant weighing several hundred pounds had risen three feet into the air, floated the entire length of the room, and then landed gracefully in the fireplace.
She wondered now how best to put her special skill to work. First she had to ascertain just what they were up against. Chris Baines had described shadow shapes swarming over them. The description rang bells in the back of her mind. She’d read something about similar phenomenon, but it had been a long time ago and she couldn’t bring the exact details to the forefront of her mind.
She sat down on the cold hard tiles in the middle of the foyer and closed her eyes. Letting her breathing settle into a steady rise and fall, she lowered her defenses little by little and opened her mind, letting the store of random images floating about the place register in the deepest part of her subconscious.
Come on, show me what you are. She spoke the words in her mind, calling out to the entities that inhabited Dunster House.
You’re very brave, Dr. Morgan. You really don’t want to know what we are.
The words entered her head. She recognized the voice immediately. The young man who had barged into the building earlier spitting piss and vinegar. Lassiter. Jonathan Lassiter.
She flicked open her eyes, but there was nothing to see. Nothing at all…except…
She focused on the elevators. The indicator panels were glowing red, letters instead of numbers.
Up here.
Up where? she thought and the answer came to her in another psychic flash.
The penthouse. Come and join the party.
She got to her feet and crossed the marble floor to the elevators. Okay, she thought. You want to play, we’ll play. She punched the call button and waited for the elevator to descend. The doors opened and she stepped inside. The doors closed and the elevator began its upward journey.
It was only when it reached the halfway point that she realized she hadn’t selected a floor.
Ellen McCrory.
When he opened his eyes, Chris Baines could see Ellen McCrory.
That couldn’t be, but she was there, in the doorway to the apartment building. Standing behind the ornate glass doors.
She was smiling at him. She raised her hand and waved. No, she beckoned him.
Beware the beckoning stranger.
The words vibrated in his brain.
Ellen isn’t a stranger. She’s a colleague, a friend. I thought she was dead, but she can’t be.
Baines opened the door to the SUV and slammed it closed behind him. His feet on the pavement felt a bit shaky, but he made himself cover the distance between the vehicle and the doors.
The glass felt cold to the touch, and when he took his fingers away they left an imprint. He touched the mark and thought the imprint was sli
ghtly indented, as though the pressure of his touch had pushed the glass inward a little.
Ellen was beckoning him more now.
It looked as if she was naked. That must be a trick of the light.
Baines took the handle of one of the heavy glass doors and pulled it toward him. It opened and it felt like a hand tugged at his clothes to encourage him inside.
There was no sign of Ellen.
He looked around the foyer, but it was empty.
Then he felt moisture on his head, as if water had dripped onto him.
He looked up and wished he hadn’t. He wished he had stayed in the SUV.
He had found Ellen.
She was hanging from the ceiling by her hands and feet. Her arms and legs were bent behind her so her body was arched forward, as if waiting to pounce.
Surrounding her, forming a blanket of black around her, were dozens of what seemed to be shadows. When Baines looked more closely, he saw they were more than shadows; they had more substance. They were different shapes and sizes but coalesced into a smooth sea of darkness. The smaller ones looked like beetles with arched backs, while some of the larger ones had appendages poking from misshapen bodies in a parody of limbs.
Baines wanted to run, but he wasn’t fast enough.
With a scream that was as shrill as it was fierce, Ellen fell onto him and enveloped him like a huge eiderdown of skin. She wrapped herself around him, folding into every crevice and orifice until she was invading him.
When he was totally entrapped, the black shapes dropped from the ceiling and entered him.
The service stairs up to the penthouse were poorly lit, just two low-wattage emergency lights lit their path as Carter and Black climbed. They reached the top of the staircase and were confronted by a steel-clad door. Carter twisted the handle, but the door didn’t budge. “Damn it!” he said softly and as the words left his lips, there was a click and the door swung inward.
“Looks like we’re expected,” Black said.
“That’s worrying,” Carter said. “Come on. Stay close.”
